So, I’ve been plugging away at this parenting gig for a good long time, and I’ve now reached the point where I have children of nine and six. In fact, by this time next week, I’ll have children of ten and seven. Wow – it seems like only a couple of geological ages ago that I was getting up for night feeds. So, for those of you still struggling through the baby and toddler years, my PSA of the day is this: Yes, those rumours about how those stages end really are true. Hang on in there, and some day you too will have children who can eat the same food as you (even if they won’t), make it through most nights without requiring feeding or attention, take themselves off to the toilet and deal with all needed post-excretion cleanup activities, entertain themselves without completely demolishing your front room, and have interesting conversations to boot.

Anyway, one of the things about this age I particularly like is school. Part of that, of course, is the whole thing of having my children looked after for a few hours most days at the state’s expense, but there’s also the fact that I find it fascinating. I love hearing about what they’re learning and what topics they’re working on and seeing what Katie gets for home learning, which is what they call homework these days (Jamie is in a specialised autistic unit and doesn’t get any). And it’s something I’ve often wanted to blog about, except that I can’t think of any particularly pithy observations to make about it – just lots of rambling on about such gripping stuff as the fact that Jamie’s current class topic is Britain from the Stone Age through to the Iron Age whereas Katie’s for last term was Hot and Cold Places and we haven’t had the handouts sent out about this term’s topic yet. All of which, as riveting as it is to me, would be also of interest only to my mother, possibly some other family members, and the occasional Googler for information on what UK children might get set for homework at such-and-such an age.

While this might not seem like such a problem given that it’s not as though I write anything else on this blog these days, I do at least in theory plan to start using it for edgy observations on the state of the world or something. And then, the other day, I suddenly realised the perfect and obvious solution to this problem was to set up another blog for the sole purpose of writing about school-related stuff. I don’t know why I didn’t think of it years ago.

And thus did it come about that I have set up The School Chronicles, where I will waffle on about school-related stuff to my heart’s content while saving this blog for any actual interesting posts I ever get round to writing in the future.